Pat Robertson’s ridiculous accusation against S.F. gay men

Still stuck in the homophobic fog of the 1980s, Pat Robertson mentioned in passing on his TV show The 700 Club Tuesday that gay men with HIV or AIDS wear special rings designed to purposely infect others with the virus.

“Yeah, really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder,” Roberts went on. “But anyhow.”

Yeah, anyhow.

The televangelist volunteered that bit of paranoia after a viewer called in asking whether her pastor should have warned her that the elderly man she drove to church was dying of AIDS. Robertson told her that though he “used to think it was transmitted by saliva and other things, now they say it may be sexual contact.”

“What to say if you’re driving an elderly man whose got AIDS? Don’t have sex with them,” Robertson advised. “Unless there’s a cut or some bodily fluid transmission, I think you’re not going to catch it.”

Robertson told The Atlantic Wire that he didn’t mean to disparage the gay community or anyone infected with the disease.

“In my own experience, our organization sponsored a meeting years ago in San Francisco where trained security officers warned me about shaking hands because, in those days, certain AIDS-infected activists were deliberately trying to infect people like me by virtue of rings which would cut fingers and transfer blood,” he told the news outlet, which suggests the 83-year-old retire already and quit espousing such out-of-touch views.

The YouTube clip has been taken down because of copyright claims by CBN, the Christian news network that broadcasts the show. Check it. But you could clearly tell – at the 39-minute mark in the video below – where CBN edited out Robertson’s bloodletting-gays comment.